Virginia Miracle

This morning on Wired, I read about a new referral bonus for World of Warcraft players who successfully recruit new players. The genius of it? The referral bonus is specifically tailored to their target audience. If you bring in a new player you get, to quote the Blizzard support site, “an exclusive in-game zhevra mount“. WoW Wiki describes a zhevra as a unicorn-like , zebra-hybrid equine beast. How fun is it that they have to specify that this will be “in-game”? Heck, if I could win a zebra with a horn in real life I would quit my job to recruit Warcraft players.

Because I am a WoW virgin, I reached out to the esteemed Mike Nels to comment. Mike is my only friend who has been able to manage a long term relationship with Warcraft – others have tried and become so engrossed that they needed to go cold turkey. Mike manages a busy technical job, brilliant wife, 2 kids under 4, a single-digit golf handicap, and his WoW identity.

So, what does this brand evangelist think about this newest referral marketing execution?

Blizzard has done a great job with Warcraft because they continue to display mastery at converting real life friends into crack whores.

Step 1: Convince WoW players that playing the game with their real life friends/girlfriend/spouse is a great way to spend quality time with them. Throw in a stylish mount at the referring friend and you increase allure.

Step 2: Create 70 levels (soon to be 80) of eye-popping content and status so instead of playing with your friends, you are “coopeting” with them to see who can get to 70 fastest.

Step 3: Throw a myriad of powerfully sexy gear at those that reach 70 so that the race to 70 soon becomes a competition about who has the best gear.

Step 4: Guard your eyes from the pasty white boys that used to be friends, but now never see each other’s real faces or the light of day because they need to take down this one last ogre/dragon/demon/ghost to get the best piece of gear. Only give the gear to one of them and force them to repeat step 4 until every player has the gear. Oh, and did I mention that each player wears about 16 pieces of gear. So repeat this once for each friend and once for each type of gear.

Step 5: Introduce more levels, monsters, gear into the next expansion pack and toss out some referral bonus. Repeat process starting with Step 1.

I’m exhausted just reading it, but I do understand that this cycle, with its interdependencies and intricacies, is a sustainable way to grow a community and identify new potential members. Are there other examples of brands that market through “Coopetition“?

Yesterday’s WSJ contained a front page story detailing the Olive Garden’s unusual challenge of figuring out how to handle the repeated, vocal endorsements of Kendra Wilkinson. As a playmate, Hef girlfriend, star of E!’s Girls Next Door, and “friend” of 730k+ on MySpace, Ms. Wilkinson has a considerable platform for her declarations of Olive Garden love regardless of the feelings the family-friendly brand may have about her.

The core question posed in this situation is what do you do if you find yourself with a brand ambassador that in no way matches the brand “persona” imagined in the board room? What if they do not reflect the brand’s core values? What if they aren’t even using the product in the way you imagined or marketed it? As the article repeats, this is a complicated issue, but I think there are a few steps to walk through when any unexpected brand ambassador shows himself – whether or not they match your ideal target.

Stage 1: Acceptance. Per the solid advice of WOMMA board member Dave Balter, the first thing to do is accept that this is going on and it can’t be stopped. The quicker you can pass through this stage, the quicker you can get to the good stuff.

Stage 2: Opprtunity Identification. Maybe this isn’t your dream spokesperson, but is there an opportunity here? While there are sure to be pros and cons, why not explore? Does the appearance of a new ambassador mean that there are additional untapped market segments for the brand? Could you engage these new segments without compromising your values or offending your core audience?

Stage 3: Reimagine Success. Chances are that there is an engagement option somewhere between ignoring and embracing the rogue ambassador where the pros outweigh the cons for the brand. Success may not be what you envisioned at the company retreat, but the rogue brand ambassador could show you the promise of a different reality that might have higher revenues and more word of mouth surrounding it.

How would the pros and cons weigh out for inviting Kendra to design her own chicken parm-based entree? Offering to shut down the place to host her birthday? Or simply inviting her on a tour of the test kitchens to be taped for the show? Maybe some old fashioned “hospitaliano” could go a long way.

But the REAL question is, what am I doing with my life when Kendra Wilkinson has her own WSJ etching on page 1?

*cross posted from the Ogilvy PR 360 DI blog*

For the 4th time in my young life, I am shopping for a house. My requirements have changed from the first time I bought (access to schools with foreign language immersion vs. stumbling distance from the best margarita in Austin), but shockingly little else about the process has. Where are my awesome social media apps to make this fun? Not being able to leave well enough alone, I started to ponder why.

• Some of the earliest examples of social media promoted the collective good – user reviews on restaurants or local businesses benefit the whole because when there is good food, we all win.
• And then there’s altruism/karma. If I waste $20 on a bad movie or discover a great book, chances are I may write a brief review just to let you know. It doesn’t really benefit me immediately, but I benefit from the reviews of others so its a positive cycle. Like blogging, this also appeals to ego.
• And then, of course, the fuzzy satisfaction of our ever-increasing digital interconnections. We Link, we Friend, we Match, we validate each other’s existence on the interweb by remarking on each other’s photos and vying for spots on blogrolls and in RSS feeds.

So where does the gnarly world of real estate fall in this spectrum? In most transactions, there is a winner and a loser. Can that dynamic thrive in social media? Trulia certainly doesn’t answer the call – it is little more than another online listing service with some Y!answers tacked on. And the dozens of MLS listing sites are just push marketing.

Enter FranklyMLS, claiming to be “The First Wiki MLS“. The wiki is built up by buyer’s agents – not the agents marketing the homes. In addition to the listing info, these agents add their own photos and important factual data that would be strategically missing from a seller’s MLS listing such as homes backing up to busy streets, being located under an overpass, having bizarre neighbors, etc. It is by no means an elegant UI, but the wiki contains meaty data and its sorting an searching features are tight. The FranklyMLS wiki saves the other buyer’s agents a lot of time and creates a great resource for those of us trying to wrap our arms around the concept of commuting 40 minutes to get to a house priced at $500 per square foot. In a recession.

Frank’s schtick “Don’t Buy! Ask Why!” is that listing agents can’t be trusted and you deserve to work with someone who will tell you the truth. The wiki extends the seller vs. buyer divide, but unites buyers and their representatives to share data as they search for deals that meet their needs. So while there isn’t a current solution for all parties to hug it out in social media, Frank has taken a big step for frightened buyers like me and I appreciate it. Now will someone give this great idea a cosmetic facelift?

I guess I always receive the Ralph Lauren e-newsletter, but I never really notice it. Until today. How is this for an elegant & timely promotion of your Olympic integration?

The time stamp was within 8 hours of both the actual opening ceremonies and the US rebroadcast tonight. The callout on the bottom gives me a reason to visit their site and check for images of how the US Olympic team actually looked in the outfits. Now, while I will not be plunking down $125 for one of their super-cool Olympic polo shirts, I may check out the site again on my laptop while watching the games.

In a gmail inbox full of messages from BabyCenter, J.Crew, Banana, eBay, et al, this really stands out.

I was lucky enough to talk to Tanya Lewis from PR Week a few weeks ago and to have my headshot and a few paragraphs appear in this week’s PR Week. The article profiles 4 “creatives” promoting greater understanding of social media in PR. Because of the Aug 4 timing, I was very excited to do this as I could discuss the work my team will be doing covering real long-tail athlete stories on the ground in Beijing over at http://summergames.lenovo.com and at www.twitter.com/lenovo2008.

The online article is behind a subscriber-only firewall and the print article is on Page 13 so, being new to PR, I pretty much assumed this would be the veritable tree falling in the forest. Not so. Here’s what I learned this week:

• Print is alive and well in certain sectors – evidently, I have a lot of colleagues and friends who comb every page of PR Week.
• News of print coverage travels fast online through social media. Change blogger and former colleague Qui Diaz was quick to tweet her congratulations and I have received emails from a range of folks I hadn’t heard from in a while.
• But most interesting? Everyone who wants to be perceived as creative has their headshot done in front of a brick wall. ALL 4 individuals from the article had done this. I was lucky that mine looked slightly different as it was taken in front of a “Beware of the Dog” mural in an alley in Greenville (thank you Brains on Fire). Evidently, I’m going to have to think of something really nutty – swinging from a trapeze? – to set me apart from the rest of the “creative” PR set. Any suggestions?